For example, Marmite Crumpets don’t exist. You cannot buy them at the supermarket. To be clear: you can buy crumpets, you can buy marmite, you can buy butter; but you have to assemble them at home.
If you walk into a breakfast cafe, they will happily serve you sausage / egg / bacon / french toast / bubble / squeak (whatever that is). But no marmite crumpets. If you ask them to make it, they will give you a very strange look. It’s not typically offered. It’s something you just have to make at home.
It is unbuyable. Any tourist who comes to the UK to try a Marmite crumpet would need to bring a toaster or an oven with them, or quickly befriend a brit and hope that they have all the ingredients at home.
It’s not a secret. You just can’t have it.
*munches into crumpet thoughtfully, and salivates at the juicy savory delight, whilst staring at you pityingly and condescendingly*
Anyway, what’s something that I could never experience unless I made it myself in your local?
A Twinkie weiner sandwich.
- Cook a hot dog
- Slice a twinkie halfway through the bottom longwise to get something like a hotdog bun
- Insert the cooked hotdog into newly created bun
- Squirt easy cheese along the length of the hot dog
- Dip in milk
- Eat
Weird Al invented this in 1989 in his movie UHF and it’s still not available in stores for some reason
Isn’t a Twinkie partly chocolate?
Nah that’s a chocodile which is a chocolate covered Twinkie
You may be thinking of a ho-ho. Also made by Hostess.
I need to rewatch that movie (and seriously, how great of an actor is Weird Al?)
For good reason. Wtf
Yeah some foods are too powerful for the general public to consume freely.
If I’m going to have a twinkie, I’ll grill it (or toss it in the air fryer I have to try that) just enough until it starts to caramelize on the outside
YES CHEF that sounds unironically delicious
it is. some friends in college were getting together around thanksgiving for a turkey roast. i’m allergic to turkey so I intentionally misheard them and showed up with a box of twinkies. a tradition was born that day.
Sounds like something you could get at a state fair
Marmite crumpets shouldn’t exist!
What other cosmic horrors are you creating in your kitchen‽
Marmite crumpets shouldn’t exist!
You’re right. Not without cheese.
The British were so focused on whether they could, they didn’t stop to think about whether they should.
we have a chicken stew that we make with barley and oats that sometimes has entire pieces of cartillage in it, if that helps
thank you
Coffee. I used to be a coffee fiend, I drank up to 12-13 cups a day, and only stopped because it was worsening my anxiety. I live in a coffee producing country and learnt how to make a good cup in an espresso machine, even got all the doodads to make the process standardized and get the exact same cup every time.
I can only drink coffee made by select hands now. Everything else tastes like jet fuel, and it’s worse when travelling.
Outside of the caffeine and kidney stone issues you must’ve been peeing every 30 minutes
Pretty much, lol
I make sure to never get attached to one brew so I can drink it anywhere, anytime. I’ll drink instant without hot water if I need to (and not just frappe.)
That’s… Probably not a bad idea, lol. I got too used to good things.
Don’t ever, under any circumstances, drink motorway service station coffee in France. It tastes like battery acid even if you’re used to shitty coffee.
That sounds like an intense relationship you have with coffee. I have to admit, 2-3 a day and I get palpatations and am unable to sleep. I rarely drink it for the flavour
Oh I needed it for college. I was impatient and pushed myself too hard during my last 2 years, some weeks I slept fewer than 10 hours collectively.
I’ve since cut it almost entirely, and because of that my usual cup gives me the jitters. I still love coffee and would like nothing more than having one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but my body can’t take it anymore (nor can my mental health honestly). Aging sucks, lol.
The sad thing is that it is buyable but not in places below like 200k population. In Europe idk how far third wave type coffe got everywhere else but I’d imagine in international cities it’s largely available all over the world.
It’s frankly insane how different a specialty coffe place is from a Caffe. And how many specialty coffe places there are in big cities/ university towns.
The provinces seem to not be able to sustain good coffe unfortunately. Unless there is someone who doesn’t care about the balance sheet.
Marmite Crumpets don’t exist
Yet you brought them into existence. May god have mercy on your soul.
I didn’t invent them. I was born into them, molded by them.
Are hotels in the UK not equipped with toasters?
No, just a shitty kettle.
You’re supposed to wash it out after you shit in it
I would never. The next guest would want to savor my peaty aroma and be awed.
you love the sweet plastic taste and you know it!
You’ve set the bar way too low. You can’t buy peanut butter toast in grocery stores, either.
I would have said the same thing about PB&Js, too, except society is so depraved now that that’s no longer true.
Trypophobia, apparently
The Marmite causes the eggs to hatch in your tummy 🤗
While you can go to a restaraunt/cafe and buy pancakes. I havent found a premade packet version that just needs warming up that isnt absolute shit.
Give me fresh or give me death!
Here’s something that you can’t buy outside of Italy: mozzarella. I tasted proper mozzarella in Tuscany and it’s nothing like the shit labeled mozzarella sold in supermarkets around the world, and for a good reason: real mozzarella has a shelf life shorter than Trump’s attention span.
There are tons of places that have fresh mozz
You mean those watery packets of cheese I sometimes buy aren’t supposed to taste like watered down kangaroo testicles?
Look at the plus side: at least you know what kangaroo testicles taste like.
it’s nothing like the shit labeled mozzarella sold in supermarkets around the world
That’s called mot-zer-eller, if I remember right.
no no, it’s “Moe’s a fella”
We have a deli here that makes fresh moz daily, you can find places that do it all over. Shelf-life really only keeps it out of supermarkets. The problem for many forms of cheese in many countries, and especially the US, is the requirements around pasturization. Completely changes the texture and taste. And for moz specifically, the lack of Buffalo.
Buffalo…sauce? Buffalo, New York? Buffalo the ungulate? I am confused
Buffalo the animal (I think it’s water buffalo for mozzarella)
As the other commenter stated, Italian moz is made from water buffalo milk, which the US doesn’t have. And unfortunately, it’s not importable because it wouldn’t survive the trip without pasteurization (and current risks of bird flu with less pasturized milks due to lax US handling laws). There are also laws in the EU about what can be called moz, which dont exist in the US (don’t get cheddar lovers started).
US moz is made with cows milk, and while it can be very good when made fresh, most people find the Itallian version to be a completely different cheese, and much more applicable to the dishes it is served with in Italy.
In the US, American-Italian food has made shifts to items like chicken parm, etc, partly because of historic American tastes, but also because of what pairs better with the cheese.
All this to say, moz is good, in Italy and in the US. But they are very different cheeses.
Very interesting, I did not know that! Cool stuff
Brother, we have all of those ingredients everywhere. We have a little British store run by expats who could get whatever packaged crumpet you use. Shit, I can make a batch of crumpets in about 15 minutes.
It’s not like a crazy recipe that needs balanced flavors to be done right. Like I’ve never had a good poutine outside of Quebec. It’s always sad beige gravy with the wrong seasonings or mozzarella or frozen fries or all of the above. It is never right.
What we can also talk about is local places making local dishes but they do it wrong and cheap or “good enough” and people come from abroad and try the dishes and think they’re mid because they went to the wrong place.
TL;DR: I love poutine.
/Rant
I had poutine at random place in Edinburgh which a Canadian friend said was the best poutine he’d had outside of Quebec. “Still shit though”, in comparison to in Quebec
It’s not like a crazy recipe that needs balanced flavors to be done right.
We’re talking British cuisine here
Peanut butter toast
But you can get that at any restaurant?
Children.
Technically… you could buy them premade
My second kid was made at a Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, OH.
It sounds like it was quite the effort
Not much to it on my end. As a male, that is.
Dang, my condolences to your partner.
It’s not like it was a Motel 8.
But maybe it should have been, maybe it should have been…
You don’t need to be at home to make them; it’s just more socially acceptable than in a cafe.
Boiled children’s feet
Marmite on Weetbix.
Ingredients:
- 1 Weetbix
- butter (lots)
- Marmite (lots)
Method:
Select a choice looking compressed wheat brick, apply a thick layer of butter, spread the Marmite across the layer of butter.This was a common school snack when I was growing up.
I’m gonna try this. Does the brick need to be wet or toasted?
But isn’t it better soaked in milk first?
When eating for breakfast, yes.
Not great in the lunch box, with the milk sloshing around and all
the other kids laughter was actually jealousy, he told himself
The bed!
